Watching Blizzard: And Thursday is newsday, too

Here at Team Blizzard Watch, we’ve been waiting one day, just one day of the week where we can kick back and take a nice afternoon nap. (Who doesn’t love naps? Everybody loves naps!) Sometimes that’s Wednesday. Sometimes Thursday. Maybe Friday. Monday is give or take and Tuesday is rare.

This week, Blizzard has kept things interesting by doling out a little bit of news every day. Which is pretty great… even though it’s significantly cut into nap time. (Not cool, Blizzard. Not cool.)

Anyway, here’s what’s been in the news today.

We’re going to hear more about Battle for Azeroth soon

• Very soon. A developer Q&A with Ion Hazzikostas is scheduled for Tuesday… and the rumor mill suggests pre-orders may be going live around that time.
• Supporting that rumor, we now know what the BfA collector’s edition bonuses are (probably), though we don’t have official art yet.
• And Muffinus is teasing us about something… but we aren’t sure what.

Maiev is coming to the Nexus

• The Heroes of the Storm team has been putting out hero teasers all week, and now we know: Maiev is the next hero. Her hero spotlight is scheduled to come out on Friday.

Chris Metzen had his first opportunity to enjoy WoW as a player

• And the verdict is in: he loves it! Now he’s properly one of us.

Hearthstone is shaking up Ranked Play

• Ben Brode (WELL MET!) announced changes to the ranking system which should make it easier to match everyone with similarly-skilled players when the ladder resets every month. I, for one, am looking forward to not having to stumble over Legend ranked players when I jump into ranked at the first of the month.

We haven’t posted this one yet, but…

• By the time the Overwatch team posted its latest developer video, most of Team Blizzard Watch had retreated for a very belated nap time. (Or they were just watching Overwatch League.) We’ll post some commentary tomorrow, but you can enjoy Jeff running down some popular community topics right now.

And just for fun, Dot Esports wrote up the heartening (maybe) tale of a Redditor who said he would buy every Shanghai Dragons skin in Overwatch if the Dragons won a game against Dynasty yesterday. And though they lost the match, they did manage to eek out one win. Redditor MissingPear followed through, and now has a lot of snazzy red and black skins to enjoy.

That’s all for tonight, folks. This is Liz from the Blizzard Watch team, signing out.